Workshop: The horse move in Philosophical Counseling (1 hour)
What I call the horse move in philosophical counseling outlines a style starting from a rule of the game of chess, as if to say: the philosophical counselor ‘moves’ like this, in L for 2+1 squares, not one more and not one less. The horse move is not structured as a method divided into stages, rather it remains a process in the sense of the way of proceeding. One side of the L-shaped movement unites the levels of concept and experience – from concept to experience and from experience to concept. The side orthogonal to the first, on the other hand, represents the metaphor or image, the opposite, etc. I would not say that this second side opens up thinking any more than conceptualization and exemplification do. In fact, the latter can already contain elements that problematize the ideas of the counselee. It opens, elsewhere, nonetheless. Moreover, the horse move is such that it can be oriented in different ways on the chessboard, which takes up the whole space of the dialogue. And the side of the metaphor or of the image or of the opposite, etc. can well become the first in the questioning of the counselor. Philosophical counseling represents the dialogical declination of the horse step. This is the gait with which anyone who wants to dialogue philosophically is invited to measure themselves.
Annalisa Rossi is PhD in Philosophy (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice). She studied at the Leopold-Franzens Universität in Innsbruck and was postgraduate researcher in philosophy at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici in Naples, and at the Technische Universität in Berlin. She has been awarded two post-doc Research Grants at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari. Since 2006 she is teacher and training assistant in the II level Master in Philosophical Counseling (COFIL) of Ca’ Foscari University, up to didactic coordinator in the last editions. Associate Lecturer in the Master in Philosophical Counseling and Consultancy at the West University of Timisoara from 2016 to present. Various philosophical counseling projects for Schools and Companies – f.i. Brescia Hospital Training Unit in 2019 and 2020, both at the beginning and at the end of the year, compatibly with the COVID-19 emergency. Books: Possibilità dell’io. Il cogito di Descartes e un dibattito contemporaneo: Heidegger e Henry (Mimesis, Milan-Udine 2006); U. Galimberti, L. Perissinotto and A. Rossi (eds.), Tra il dire e il fare. Saggi e testimonianze sulla consulenza filosofica, Mimesis, 2011; F. Batisti, A. Morelli and A. Rossi (eds.), La consulenza filosofica oggi tra formazione e ricerca, Mimesis, 2022. Email: annalisa.rossi@e-uvt.ro